My second life allowed me to assume it was normal for a time at least. First of all I seemed to be in a perfectly normal Japan. The technology matched pretty well with what I remembered from my first childhood and after a few weeks of skimming the local library I determined there was nothing obviously strange going on. No monsters, magic or anything else that could cause me lots of pain and torment. Sure some great calamity could happen at some point in time in the future or there could be hidden dangers that I don't know anything about, but worrying about things I couldn't control wouldn't do me any good so I decided to enjoy my new life as much as I could.

I found a joy in learning about the new culture I was in. I appeared to have a nice normal loving family. My mother stayed at home and my father worked for the police department. This job worried me somewhat as in most fiction; police officers were pretty much just cannon fodder in the event of alien invasion or what not and wouldn't have a long life expectancy. However I reminded myself that just because I had been sent to a fictional world the first time there was no certainly I would be sent to another one, or if I was it could be a very peaceful world where the focus was on romance, sex, or even one of those card game anime. Really I was worrying over nothing.

So I grew to be 4 years old, one year older then I had been last time when I killed myself. I'm not sure why that thought occurred to me just then, as I awoke on my birthday. For some reason I couldn't shake the memory of ending my own life, the way the sky had looked before I went under, how cold the water was. Perhaps I was finally having some sort of Post-traumatic stress after a successful suicide? Strange it took 4 years for it to kick in.

I went down-stairs and greeted my mother as she served my breakfast. She was a pretty woman, with a kind face. She seemed oddly content to be a housewife and was soft spoken, but didn't seem to be overly submissive. Looking at her life from someone who had once been a young and independent woman in America her life was extremely foreign.

Perhaps I thought to myself, I would attempt to be more feminine in this life. You had to be so very careful not to be thought of as weak if you embraced traditional gender roles in America, but there was a quite strength to this woman that was now my mother and just perhaps I could try to be more like her.

On the other hand, I considered as I forced the chopsticks to obey my fingers, my new father also had a quite strength to him. This could have more to do with Japanese culture then with gender roles, or just as my parents as individuals.

My father sat down at the table and also greeted me, we did not I noticed seemed to be a very religious family as no prayer had been said at the table. This was a relief to me as I had been agnostic my first life and I supposed I was now…was it the Buddhist that believed in reincarnation? I think so, but that also had something to do with karma and being reincarnated into animals. Didn't it? I'm going to have to do some more research, though I believe I had confused my mother enough for an entire lifetime the last time we went to the library and I had scorned the children's books for maps of the world and anything to do with history that I could find. Exactly how would she react to my attempts at finding books on religion? I mused.

I was interrupted from my ponderous by my parents who not only wanted to wish me a happy birthday they also wanted to inform me that my mother was pregnant. And I would have new sibling before my next birthday.

I made sure to stress my happiness about the new child as that is what was expected and wanted from me, truly I didn't really care. Babies weren't very interesting and I have had younger siblings before so it wouldn't really be that much of a change for me. Though I could, if I wanted to…. use my new sibling as a confidant?

No adult would believe me if I told them I was a reincarnation or if they did they wouldn't know how to feel about it and it could damage my relationship with that person. A child though would believe me and even think it was 'cool'. Yes I could build up a nice sibling relationship based around my secret, really bond with this future child in a way that I wouldn't be able to do with my new parents.

Suddenly developing more of an interest in the child, I tuned into my parent's conversation as they were discussing baby names.

"I've always liked the name Raito myself. Yagami Raito. Has a nice sound to it, yes?"

Raito…Raito in English would be pronounced Light.

Light Yagami…from Death Note.

God damn it.